AberdeenBlocked Drains & Repairs

Specialised offshore and dockyard cleaning services

Complete drain and sewer services

Hazardous waste removal

24/7/365 emergency service

No call out charges

Drainage services for the North of Scotland, including the Highlands and Islands, are provided by the long standing, experienced team from our Bridge of Don depot, just outside Aberdeen. Formerly known as Drain Devils, this team has been operating since 1997 and was a firmly established company with a loyal client base when it became part of the Lanes Group in 2008.

Drain Devils continued to operate under its own respected brand name, despite adopting Lanes’ pink on its fleet. But, after integrating fully into the Lanes Group plc network from 1 August 2013, it’s Lanes in name too.

National Contracts

Despite much of the activity managed by our Aberdeen depot consisting of specialist tasks tailored for the local offshore and dockyard projects, the team still finds time to carry out all the usual reactive and proactive drainage works for Lanes’ national clients in the area, such as key accounts Iceland and Aldi in the retail sector, and Priory hospitals and care homes.

Regional Commerce

Landmarks abound in Aberdeen, many of which benefit from our drainage expertise. The Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre; Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (apparently the largest hospital site in Europe); the Robert Gordon University, and Pittodrie Stadium, home of Aberdeen FC (and forever associated with a certain Sir Alex Ferguson), to name but a few.

And then there’s the public sector work. Kier Services holds a Council contract for schools and other amenities in and around Aberdeenshire and Kier turns to Lanes to remedy blockages, do pushrod CCTV investigations, and effect remedial works such as excavation, patch lining and manhole cover replacement. We also work direct for Aberdeenshire Council offering similar expertise on school premises. Through Mott MacDonald, the global consultancy owned by its employees, Lanes has worked on many buildings such as tower blocks and low rises in Aberdeen City and provided vactor cleaning and CCTV surveying of sites on Shetland and Orkney Islands — including Scottish and Southern Energy's Power Station on Lerwick.

Naturally, we count many names in the petro-chemical sector amongst our clients — Shell, Chevron, Wood Group, Baker Hughes, Bilfinger Salamis and Subsea 7, amongst them. And with customer service always a top priority, we find that a job well done can lead to a mutually beneficial partnership, like being asked to provide a dedicated CCTV and vactor crew to Total’s St Fergus oil and gas refinery on permanent daily duty, cleaning and surveying the foul, surface and oil lines. The team inspected and cleaned many kilometres of pipes in the time they were there, and performed other remedial works to boot.

In the dry dock and harbour, companies like Dales Marine Services look to Lanes to deal with blockages on ships and remove debris (barnacles, encrustation and scaling) from the water intake pipes used for cooling ships’ engines.

For civil engineering and construction giant, W M Donald Ltd, it is Lanes’ skilled operators who run pre-acceptance and pre-adoption CCTV inspections for new builds; as well as conduct vactor cleaning and remedial patch lining where required. With Miller Plant Ltd, involved in commercial and housing developments as well as high profile pipeline and major road projects, it’s a similar story. Both companies choose to leave this specialty to our drainage experts.

Our pollution prevention and control service, another Lanes’ specialization, has sparked considerable interest in this region, being particularly pertinent for petrochemical sites. The revolutionary Aquasentry closure devices and interceptor alarms are a huge benefit to organisations for whom guarding against pollution incidents is critical, for safety reasons and to comply with environmental management legislation and PPC guidelines.

Local Household

Covering a vast, yet generally sparsely populated geographical region, our Aberdeen depot operates an efficient septic tank emptying service, even for customers in the far-flung corners of their area. And, of course, for any domestic drain unblocking and repair from Aberdeen, reaching down to Forfar in the South, Fraserburgh in the North, and Inverness to the west, Lanes really is all you need to know.

Aberdeen is Scotland’s third most populous city and, famously, the oil capital of the UK, a sector which has largely overshadowed the area’s more traditional industries of fishing, paper-making, shipbuilding, and textiles. Our Bridge of Don Depot is dominated by the ever present North Sea. It’s a beautiful view seawards on a clear day, but it can be noisy too, with the flight path for helicopters coming and going offshore from Dyce. We weren’t surprised to learn that Aberdeen Heliport is one of the busiest commercial heliports in the world.

Visitors to the area will see immediately why Aberdeen is known as ‘The Granite City’, or sometimes the ‘Silver City’ thanks to Mica in the stone which sparkles in the sunlight. Quarried locally for almost 300 years, the grey granite used for many of the buildings, gives the city its nickname. Less well known, perhaps, is that the terraces of the Houses of Parliament and Waterloo Bridge in London are also built of the same Scottish stone. Though quarrying ceased in 1971, this hard grey granite is so durable that many city buildings look brand-new, especially when they have been cleaned, and the masonry needs little structural maintenance.

Unsurprisingly, as Aberdeen is the centre for the UK’s offshore activities, Lanes has plenty of petrochemical clients here. Having invested in specialist kit and knowledge for offshore and dockyard work, we are especially well-equipped to service this sector. Being Lanes though, naturally, you’ll find we also offer the full gamut of drainage services too across this extensive northern swathe of Scotland, whether it’s for national, regional or local clients

Areas Covered

The huge part of the country we service from here takes in some difficult terrain: there are no motorways north of Perth, the heart of Scotland, and of course there are obstacles like mountains and lochs around which the roads have been designed.

Some infrastructure investment is on the way though: Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire are to be transformed with the construction of a £700 million by pass, ready for the £750 million ‘Energetica’ project which will create a low carbon, sustainable development corridor attracting energy organisations and individuals to a 30-mile natural and built coastal environment, stretching from Lanes’ depot in Bridge of Don, North to Peterhead and West to Aberdeen International Airport.

Meantime, the geography might be challenging, but they build us tough up here in Aberdeen (maybe it’s the granite?), so, if you need a seriously professional drainage service with Lanes’ legendary customer service and friendly engineers, whether you’re in Aberdeen, Ullapool, Inverness or Forfar, you know who to call.

Aberdeen Depot News

Investment in skills combined with the latest drainage equipment is at the heart of the Lane Group drain unblocking and drain repair service in Aberdeen. The depot in Harehill, Bridge of Don, Aberdeen, employs 16 local people, providing a comprehensive … Continue reading →

A new management team for Lanes Group in Aberdeen is fast proving that getting the important things right – good service, reliability and excellent customers service – is the key to business success. Regional Manager Ian Lindsay, Area Development Manager … Continue reading →

Lanes Group Plc is pleased to announce that its Scottish drainage businesses, Castlebrae Drainage Services Ltd and Drain Devils Ltd, are to be fully integrated into its group operations. The change means that, from 1 August 2013, the company will … Continue reading →

Business leaders in Shetland have an opportunity later this month to discover the very latest regulations and technology surrounding the complex subject of drainage. The event, which is hosted by leading UK drainage company Lanes for Drains, takes place in … Continue reading →

Lanes for Drains has carried out specialist drainage works for the £445 million, five-mile extension to Scotland’s M74 motorway. The three-year project, scheduled for completion in 2011, is being handled by Interlink M74 JV, a joint venture of Morrison Construction, … Continue reading →